FULLERTON — With the Crestview League championship on the line, the Sunny Hills girls volleyball team won its anticipated rematch with Cypress in a sweep, 25-21, 25-15, 25-19, on Thursday night at Sunny Hills High.
Senior outside hitter Kayla Thienprasiddhi had 10 kills for the Lancers and junior outside hitter Olivia Urias also had 10 kills.
Sunny Hills (19-5, 6-1) can win the league title outright with a victory in the team’s regular-season finale at Canyon on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
Lancers coach Amanda Donaldson reflected on what it meant to clinch the program’s third consecutive league championship at home on senior night.
“It’s unreal,” Donaldson said. “I mean, we’ve got eight seniors out who have all been in this program for a long time and working their butts off. And so to be able to come in and put that honorable number up on that banner up there for a 2025 league championship is crazy, especially with all the changing of the leagues from year to year. You never know what you’re going to get.”
Cypress jumped out to 4-1 lead before Sunny Hills settled in and began to attack with its pins, Thienpradsiddhi and Urias, while also controlling the net with sophomore middle blocker Reagan Williams.
The Centurions (15-10, 6-2) stayed close in the first and third sets thanks to stellar play from Isabella Faro and Leona Alexis.
But in the middle, Williams was able to be a consistently strong presence at the net.
“In that third set in particular, she was just block for block for block, which really created that nice spread for us,” Donaldson said of Williams, “and allowed us to be, you know, keep that comfortability up until the end. Even though the other team started coming back.”
Thienpradsiddhi was enjoying the vibrant atmosphere in the gym and felt like it made a difference in the match.
“It shows how much we’ve improved over that time since the last time we played them (in a five-set match),” she said. “I think it shows how we pushed really hard and I think our fans helped a lot. It was good to have their energy.”
Donaldson is excited to finish the regular season strong and hopefully make a deep run in the CIF-SS playoffs.
“There’s zero predictability and it’s all an absolute dogfight and it makes it fun,” she said, “but it’s sure a heck of a lot more stressful. But it really pushes us and makes us ready for playoff time. So we’re ready for it. We got to take care of business against Canyon because we certainly don’t want to share that league title with Cypress.”
“Regardless of where we end up, we’re ready for it,” Donaldson added about the playoffs. “We know that because we’ve had multiple league championships the past couple seasons, and even the season two years ago, 2023, we had a crazy long run in CIF and to the state playoffs.”
“The target gets bigger every single year, and as fun as it is, every time that target just gets bigger and bigger and we’re ready for it,” she continued. “These girls don’t get shook very often, so it’s really, really neat to see them, you know, not have too much stress out there and just be able to go get it done. And they did exactly that.”